American Incompetence
by Sohara von Salienta
Summary: What would really happen if an American was bunged into Middle-Earth? Would it prove to be so dazzlingly incompetent that the Fellowship drops it at the nearest farm they come across? Will reason triumph, and will they knock it off with a very large rock?
1. Of Accidental Pyromaniacs

_Disclaimer: Josephine, possibly, may be mine, and certain undignified situations and bits of dialogue may be, as well, but everything else belongs to either J.R.R. Tolkien or the makers of the movies. _Lord of the Rings_, obviously, not _Love Actually _or _Harry Potter_. Not making any money, not doing anything but satisfying personal grievances._

_A/N: I was browsing through the livejournal community deleterius once upon a time, and found myself getting almost physically ill to see the perfect American Mary-Sues that were just dropped into Middle-Earth and somehow managed to survive and come out tops in everything and made everyone fall in love with him. But, seriously? What would _really_ happen if an American kid was just dropped into Middle-Earth? Would her nose-hair get frizzled by the vicious Balrog, or would her ankles attract mad bunches of fleas? Would she prove to be so dazzlingly incompetent that the Fellowship drops her at the nearest farmer's they come across? Or will reason triumph, and will they just knock her off with a very large rock?_

**American Incompetence**

****

**Of Accidental Pyromaniacs and Unexpected Visitors**

It was raining dismally, and the Fellowship of the Ring had long since lost its glittering lustre of heroism to its members. They had been plodding towards Mordor for eighteen days, had not washed since they left Rivendell, were already running out of pepper, and everyone, including Pippin and Merry, was ready to kick Pippin and Merry across half of Middle-Earth for accidentally setting fire to one of the packs of food. Gandalf had made a few choice remarks at the time involving his staff and just exactly how hard certain hobbits were going to be hit with it if they did something as inconceivably careless as that again, and no one was jumping about with sunshine in their boots.

Frodo was quiet. Now and then, his hand would make a move towards a chain that hung about his neck, but, generally, he mused silently, a double wrinkle in his forehead, and nearly bashing his brains out by tripping over rocks that he failed to see. If anyone spoke, it was either Gimli, who would grumble under his breath about the folly of letting an Elf come along on such an important mission, or Pippin, who would occasionally "Oh, look!" at an oddly-coloured flower or a rabbit with a bald tail.

They plodded on, not through elegant streams of rainwater, but through ankle-deep mud and rain that smelled faintly of manure. Mud squished up between the hobbits' toes, splattered onto their calves and trousers, deposited pieces of muddy, dry grass all over their feet, and surged away again, only to cling to someone else. All nine were caked with mud from the knees down, and Gandalf found himself wishing that he had worn something in the breeches category, as nearly two feet of his robes and cloak were weighed down heavily by wet, clingy dirt.

"Should we stop to eat, Mr. Gandalf?" Sam asked hopefully, as his stomach gave an enormous rumble. "We had breakfast nearly five hours ago. It's time, sir, isn't it?"

"It is not," Gandalf said tersely. "We will be limiting ourselves to two meals a day. I present my thanks to two estimable hobbits, and concede that they deserve to be kicked soundly."

"From here into the depths of Moria, to have their blasted necks snapped," Gimli agreed, glaring at the two accidental pyromaniacs. "There are many deep mines there for prattlers such as yourselves."

The addressed had given up trying to defend themselves, settling instead for the course of sticking together and scuttling about five feet behind everyone else. They hadn't _meant_ to set the pack on fire, of course, but if one was trying to roast slices of hare without warning anyone else, and then someone else set the pack down inside the decently-sized fire without paying attention to it, the outcome was obvious. At any rate, the Fellowship was hungry, moody, dirty, snippy, and even the Hobbiton jokes that received hearty laughs in taverns failed to raise so much as the hint of a smile.

"What I would not give for a diversion," Aragorn muttered, trying futilely to keep from thinking of Arwen, to keep his tunic at least slightly clean, and failing at both.

Suddenly, there was a whistling sound, not unlike the noise of wind through a long, open-ended cave, the sun flickered ominously, and, bringing with it the same excitement that came with a tornado, a gaggle of limbs dropped out of the sky, hurtled around itself for a bit, and then landed with a crack and a definite _thud_ just to the right of the Fellowship.

"Ow," it said in a muffled voice through the mud. "_Ow_."

"By the lands of Mordor," Legolas whispered, "_what—"_

"Where am I?" the muffled voice asked, raising something that might have been a head and trying to wipe its apparent eye-sockets clean of its layer of mud. "Why's it raining?"

As disconcerted as everyone else, Gandalf stepped back, pointed his staff at the muddy thing, and asked, in a ringing voice, "_Who or what are you?"_

With another shake of mud, the thing revealed itself to have something of a humanoid form. It coughed, and spit out a collection of dry grass and mud.

"Josephine," it said. "Smith. Where am I, and who are you?"

"I am Gandalf the Grey," Gandalf the Grey replied. "What are you?"

"I'm American," Josephine said through the mud, trying to get to her feet. "Say, wait, is this—No. Where am I?"

"You are close upon four hundred leagues south from Rivendell," Gandalf clarified, still confused, as was everyone, as to what this strange thing really was, besides muddy.

"Bugger," Josephine grumbled. "I _knew_ I should've read those books."

**Read? _Review!_**


	2. Of Mud and Wild Confusion

_Disclaimer: Everything really isn't mine. No money being made, etc., and only humour being derived from fanfiction, etc._

_A/N: I had quite a few reviews telling me off for being anti-American and howling at me for undermining Americans when I wasn't an American myself. I beg to differ. I live in Georgia, go to school in Indiana, am working in New Mexico over the summer, and cringe madly whenever I come across a LOTR Mary-Sue, of which there are _plenty_, I assure you. Whenever a Mary-Sue is inserted into a LOTR fic, she is either American, an Elf, or of some amazing never-before-mentioned-in-canon race. I have been fed up to the gills with the American Mary-Sues, as they are the most wildly improbably of them all, and this fic is merely a casual sort of observance. Seriously, if any of you American readers were suddenly flung into Middle-Earth, would you suddenly be stunningly cool, gorgeous, smart, etc., and would you save the entire Fellowship from destruction? As likely as not, you would end up screwing quite a few things up, and you would, once in a while, get leaves stuck in your teeth and land squarely in a mud puddle. I _like_ canon; canon is one of my very best friends (the others being livejournals like deleterius and lotrbabb), and I protest vigorously against people who think that the Fellowship needs random little teenagers to brighten it up. _

_Think author's note is finished by now. Hope so, anyway. If offended, see livejournal, linked in profile, and leave bitter diatribes which I will read to the last drop and will give due consideration to logically worded complaints. Promise._

****

**Of Mud and Wild Confusion**

Assuming by now that this strange thing was wildly insane, the Fellowship curled 'round and stared at her. She was very, very tall indeed, had light brown hair that, for some reason, was bleached in chunks, and was wearing breeches and an unnecessarily fitted tunic of some imitation-silk material. Her shoes were not visible through the mud, but then again, neither were anyone else's. She had a habit of squinting along her shortish nose, and had tied a number of knotted bracelets around both wrists.

"It's rude to stare," Josephine informed them, flicking mud off of her eyebrow. "And I think you ought to tell me what's going on. _Why_ am I here?"

"I have no idea," Gimli said gruffly. "And why you should think we would know what your business here is—"

"Gimli!" Gandalf warned shortly. "Enough."

"I agree with the Dwarf," Legolas put in. "For once, at any rate. Let us continue. We have no obligations here, beyond ensuring the—"

He paused, stumped.

"It is of the race of Men, I think," Boromir whispered. "Although possibly of the muddiest faction."

"Beyond ensuring the lady's well-being to continue her journey."

"Wait," Josephine interrupted. "Journey? What journey?"

"The one you are on," Gimli pointed out. "You must have come here on your way to someplace."

"But I didn't!" Josephine protested. "I didn't, I really didn't! I don't know what on earth I'm doing here; I was just downloading songs for my iPod and unplugging the microwave because the newscasters said something about a tornado warning and suddenly something went _fzzzt_ and here I was."

Simultaneously, the Fellowship blinked.

Then it blinked again.

"Yes," Aragorn said finally. "Eh."

"How close is the nearest healer?" Pippin hissed to Merry.

Gandalf thoughtfully buried the end of his staff in the ever-clutching mud.

Gimli, to avoid looking at the madness, considered rebraiding the end of his beard.

"I want to go _home_," Josephine said fretfully, realizing quite well that the people around her thought she had jumped into the deep end of a writhing sea of madness.

"We had better take her along," Frodo said, painfully and slowly. "She isn't well, and I don't think she would survive long if we left her."

"Just until the nearest healer," Sam agreed. "I think it's gone off its head, Mr. Frodo."

"Gandalf?" Frodo asked.

After a long pause, the wizard sighed and beckoned to his companions, who clustered around him in a tight circle, leaving Josephine sitting up and curious.

"Tell her nothing of our quest, and say nothing of who you are. She may be a spy, but the best we can do in any case is to leave her at a practicing healer's home, who can be trusted to keep her locked away. I would prefer to have a spy known to us and directly in our midst than unknown."

"I agree," Aragorn nodded. "After all, how much trouble can one girl be?"

He was going to learn just _exactly_ how much trouble one girl could be, and, if he had asked that question a week or two later, the rest of the Fellowship would have presented him with a long list inclusive of annotations, footnotes, and heavily underlined words. However, at that point, Josephine was wildly unknown to them, and so they merely helped her out of the mud, watched chivalrously as she tried to dump the mud off of her clothes and did not snicker when she got a leaf stuck in her teeth.

**Read? _Review!_**


	3. Of Squealing and Sickness

_Disclaimer: Still not mine. Except Josephine, and that only slightly. _

_A/N: One reviewer summed this story up admirably. It is not an anti-American diatribe; it is an anti-American-_Sue_ diatribe. And…yes, well, I hope you like, and are temporarily amused._

**Of Squealing and Sickness**

Two days later, there was about a pinch left in the pepper pouch, Merry and Pippin had been effectively forbidden from lighting or going within a yard of fires, and each of the two hobbits sported scorched trousers. Food was getting scarce more quickly than anyone had guessed before departing from Rivendell, and, privately, everyone, including Josephine, blamed Josephine. The teenager was not used to going without much food for long amounts of time, and she had developed a habit of waking up a few hours after midnight and helping herself to the food packs.

The mud had stained her thin tunic beyond repair, and she was wearing Boromir's one spare shirt underneath one of the hobbits' cloaks. The cloak was too small, and the shirt too large for her. She had resorted to tucking the latter into her breeches in order to keep the chilly wind from blowing up and into her bones. They were advancing towards the mountains, and it was getting colder by the day.

On his part, Legolas was seriously regretting the mistake he had made in not insisting that his father set up Houses of Healing every ten feet all over Middle-Earth. He had never actually thought that a measure like that might be necessary, but in this case, it was.

Josephine was…_clinging_ to him.

She also kept babbling about someone named Orlando, and the words "poster" and "movies" kept jumping up into the one-sided conversation here and there, completely baffling him. The rest of the Fellowship, selfishly, was privately gloating about its narrow escape, and had made it a habit to keep about five yards behind Legolas and Josephine.

It had gotten so painful for Legolas that he was privately wishing for Sauron to come and swoop down upon them all. At least, he figured, if they weren't killed directly, men and women would likely be placed in separate cells. And he felt quite sure that Sauron would figuratively see through her trousers and group them separately.

"And I'm so excited about being here!" Josephine gabbled. "I mean, I saw the trailer for the movies and I think you looked a lot hotter in them, but whatever, y'know? I mean, I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so I didn't go see the first movie when it came out. Oooh, is that a _bow_?" she asked suddenly, diverted as she pointed at the item slung over Legolas' shoulder.

"It is," he said tiredly.

"Can you teach me how to use it?" she begged with wide-open hazel eyes. Legolas took this moment to notice just how sparse her eyelashes were, and felt justifiably proud of his own, which, pale though they were, at least _existed_.

"This is a weapon, lady, and—"

He broke off at the fifty-sixth squeal from Josephine, and almost shot an arrow down her throat.

"_Yes?"_

"You called me _lady_," she squeaked. "Eeeek! That's so _hot!_"

Legolas did not particularly care for being likened to a volcano, but, gallantly, he overlooked the comment and continued.

"I cannot train you in archery. We have much to accomplish and far to go, and we cannot pause for lessons. I have no doubt, however, that you may find someone who will agree to teach you at the healer's, where we will leave you."

Josephine hushed for about ten seconds, only casting a longing look at his quiver of arrows. Legolas breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. He knew quite well that she would find it next to impossible to find a master; she was, after all, a woman, notwithstanding the breeches. However, that excuse meant that _he_ would not have to teach her, and he had learned in the past two days that Josephine was capable of an exorbitant amount of whining.

"My feet hurt," she complained, with perfect timing. "Why are we walking so far? Don't you have carriages or wagons or something?"

Bill, the pony, perked up his ears as he heard those words, realized what he was in for, and gave an artful, exhausted whinny. _Honestly_, he thought, _as if I'm not carrying most of this blasted Fellowship's supplies already!_

"I'm _tired_," Josephine bleated again. "Can I ride the horse?"

"_Pony_," Sam mumbled, gritting his teeth and fists. "Bill is a _pony_."

"With a _name_," Merry added under his breath. "And you're too tall for him, anyway. Just like you're too tall for my cloak. And too tall for me to be sick on your head."

"You never know," Pippin said thoughtfully, memories of pinched food dancing vividly between his ears. "I could trip her if you wink at me."

"Would she think of washing her hair out with snow?" Merry asked eagerly.

Pippin smothered a grin as Josephine spun around in a circle and accidentally whacked her hand on a passing boulder. "I won't tell her if you won't."

**Read? _Review!_**


End file.
